D&D 5E Strangely enough, theres very little info about classes in 5e....

[doctorhook]

IIRC, Warlord should be a subclass of Fighter. Illusion will be one of the school specialties for wizards. At the moment, I don't recall anything about assassins, but they would certainly make sense as a subclass of rogues.

In the September 2013 playtest package, assassin was indeed the other subclass of rogue, alongside thief.

 

[doctorhook]

I would like as well to see some kind of nature champion. Ever since they moved the choice of oath at 3rd level, this option has disappeared.

I missed out on most of the early playtest packages, so I never got to see this Green Knight everybody raves about. On the one hand, it sounds nice to think that something killed 4E's warden and took its stuff (I thought the warden was tractionless and super-arbitrary); on the other hand, isn't a "nature champion" just a ranger? (In 2E it surely would have been.)

 

[Nikosandros]

I missed out on most of the early playtest packages, so I never got to see this Green Knight everybody raves about. On the one hand, it sounds nice to think that something killed 4E's warden and took its stuff (I thought the warden was tractionless and super-arbitrary); on the other hand, isn't a "nature champion" just a ranger? (In 2E it surely would have been.)

Well, the ranger is, in my mind, more of a skirmisher (at least since 3e). This knight and the warden of 4e are standing in the front line. In 4e, the warden is a defender and the green knight used heavy armor.

 

[doctorhook]

Well, the ranger is, in my mind, more of a skirmisher (at least since 3e). This knight and the warden of 4e are standing in the front line. In 4e, the warden is a defender and the green knight used heavy armor.

Certainly the ranger was more skirmishy in 3.5E. In 3E, it was still more like a nature-themed paladin clone. (Ranger was the class that was most heavily revised in that change, IIRC.) Frankly, across editions I think the ranger has probably had the least stable concept of all the core classes; it's been a magical warrior, a nature-knight, and a martial skirmisher. (I swear that back in the 4E days there was an article on WotC's site about the ranger through the years, but 20 minutes of my google-fu has thus far turned up nothing.)

 

[Nikosandros]

True enough. If they switch that concept to a subclass of ranger, I won't complain.

 

[CrusaderX]

So we have 12 classes: Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard.

And each of these 12 Classes will have multiple subclasses as well, correct?

 

[Nikosandros]

And each of these 12 Classes will have multiple subclasses as well, correct?

Yes, from what we know, each class will have customization choices, like subclasses, domains for clerics, schools for wizards, oaths for paladins, etc.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

(I swear that back in the 4E days there was an article on WotC's site about the ranger through the years, but 20 minutes of my google-fu has thus far turned up nothing.)

You are right - this article definitely existed. It might have been quite late in 4E, and in regards to the then-upcoming Controller Ranger and stuff. Or it might have been earlier, but I remember it too.

Ranger has never covered "nature knight" in any edition I've played, though, and it doesn't look like it covered it in 1E, either - 2E has you very much as the dual-wield tracking guy who wears light-ish armour and has thief skills - very light-seeming. 3E had, er, a mess. 3.5E had slightly less of a mess (I honestly don't remember it well). 4E had a ranger for every season, but none of them were a knight/tank-type or a shapeshifter-warrior.

The 4E Warden was no more arbitrary than the D&D Paladin. But no less, either. I mean, most of the D&D Paladin's actual abilities, especially in later editions, are not really drawn from fiction, they're just stuff that seems right (often that appeared in computer games before D&D!). There's consistent theme-ing, but it's an arbitrary design decision to put all those abilities on one class and separate it from Cleric.

Warden is in the same place, but re: Druid rather than Cleric. Yeah, most of his abilities could be Druid abilities (not so much Ranger ones, really), just as Paladin ones could be Cleric abilities, but you can break away a decent class by separating them, and he does lots of stuff that D&D's Druid doesn't (but that some other Druids in CRPGs and MMORPGs, have done - Warden as nature-knight was a class in 2001's Dark Age of Camelot, for example).

 

[doctorhook]

You are right - this article definitely existed. It might have been quite late in 4E, and in regards to the then-upcoming Controller Ranger and stuff. Or it might have been earlier, but I remember it too.

I creeped the archives pretty thoroughly earlier but I still couldn't find it. I'm glad to know I didn't imagine it!

Ranger has never covered "nature knight" in any edition I've played, though, and it doesn't look like it covered it in 1E, either - 2E has you very much as the dual-wield tracking guy who wears light-ish armour and has thief skills - very light-seeming. 3E had, er, a mess. 3.5E had slightly less of a mess (I honestly don't remember it well). 4E had a ranger for every season, but none of them were a knight/tank-type or a shapeshifter-warrior.

I suppose my conception of "ranger-as-nature-knight" came from how closely it was presented alongside the fighter and paladin. In 1E and 2E, the ranger was a top-tier warrior with druid spells, and IIRC it had d10 hit dice in 2E, as well as no restrictions on weapons or armor (except that it could hinder his stealth skills). This plus the fact that the ranger had alignment restrictions and something like a code of conduct made my teenage brain see the ranger as a nature-themed paladin-analogue.

(FWIW, I just peeked into my 1E PH to see if I was totally out to lunch imagining 1E rangers as mystic warriors. Nope! The really did have access to the first two levels of magic-user spells alongside three levels of druid spells.)

Certainly things did get weirder in 3E/3.5E: 3E's ranger was like 2E's ranger...which was pretty unremarkable. 3.5E beefed the rangers' skills and reduced him to d8 hit dice (like in 1E). 3.5E also brought us the scout class, which was a full-skirmisher, fully-martial nature-rogue that covered a lot of the same "hunter/tracker/spy" territory the ranger was supposed to. 4E's ranger killed the scout and took its stuff.

The 4E Warden was no more arbitrary than the D&D Paladin. But no less, either. I mean, most of the D&D Paladin's actual abilities, especially in later editions, are not really drawn from fiction, they're just stuff that seems right (often that appeared in computer games before D&D!). There's consistent theme-ing, but it's an arbitrary design decision to put all those abilities on one class and separate it from Cleric.

Warden is in the same place, but re: Druid rather than Cleric. Yeah, most of his abilities could be Druid abilities (not so much Ranger ones, really), just as Paladin ones could be Cleric abilities, but you can break away a decent class by separating them, and he does lots of stuff that D&D's Druid doesn't (but that some other Druids in CRPGs and MMORPGs, have done - Warden as nature-knight was a class in 2001's Dark Age of Camelot, for example).

Good points, all. I don't mind the idea of a "defender of nature"-type warrior, I just think the warden is fighting for an ever-smaller piece of conceptual ground in the middle of rangers, barbarians, and paladins of nature deities. I dislike redundant concepts. Warden needs to build some traction for me.

(Obviously my point above is totally moot if the warden is now a subclass of paladin or ranger or something.)

 

[Zardnaar]

You are right - this article definitely existed. It might have been quite late in 4E, and in regards to the then-upcoming Controller Ranger and stuff. Or it might have been earlier, but I remember it too.

Ranger has never covered "nature knight" in any edition I've played, though, and it doesn't look like it covered it in 1E, either - 2E has you very much as the dual-wield tracking guy who wears light-ish armour and has thief skills - very light-seeming. 3E had, er, a mess. 3.5E had slightly less of a mess (I honestly don't remember it well). 4E had a ranger for every season, but none of them were a knight/tank-type or a shapeshifter-warrior.

The 4E Warden was no more arbitrary than the D&D Paladin. But no less, either. I mean, most of the D&D Paladin's actual abilities, especially in later editions, are not really drawn from fiction, they're just stuff that seems right (often that appeared in computer games before D&D!). There's consistent theme-ing, but it's an arbitrary design decision to put all those abilities on one class and separate it from Cleric.

Warden is in the same place, but re: Druid rather than Cleric. Yeah, most of his abilities could be Druid abilities (not so much Ranger ones, really), just as Paladin ones could be Cleric abilities, but you can break away a decent class by separating them, and he does lots of stuff that D&D's Druid doesn't (but that some other Druids in CRPGs and MMORPGs, have done - Warden as nature-knight was a class in 2001's Dark Age of Camelot, for example).

Nature Knight would have been 1st ed. They could where heavy armour back then and had nature type skills. 2nd ed turned them into a dual wielding skirmisher and 3rd ed reinforced that theme. 4E really turned them into a fighter type class with dubious links to nature really. Ranger as a wilderness type though has had a stronger theme than the Bard which has really changed drastically in every edition.